In these secular, sceptical times, conversations about faith can too often be uncomfortable, even confrontational, and thus instinctively avoided. Religion generally is viewed with such suspicion that many of those who have a faith have learnt to be shy of talking about it. Which is why, over the past 35 years in a whole range of national, daily, secular papers, and in the church press that I've been associated with for most of my journalistic career, I have been doing interviews that afford those with a faith a space to talk openly and unguardedly about its challenges and blessings, how it has shaped their lives and careers, for better, or for worse. One result of listening to how others manage their doubts, the compromises they have made, and those they have refused to make, has been to reinvigourate my own faith. Here, in the midst of the living, breathing, mix-and-muddle of it all, has been a spur to reflect on what believing really means. By putting together a selection of those conversations with well-known names and people of achievement as What We Talk About When We Talk About Faith, published on March 22 by Hodder Faith, I am hoping that others might hear those same resonances in their own lives. The book is a series of individual conversations, over many years, but together they are part of a bigger but too-little-heard faith conversation. To order your copy, follow this link.

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Fundamentalist Reactionary, or Creator of Our Modern World. Listen to a podcast of a Radio 3 debate about Martin Luther at the LSE in which I took part.